Putting our creativity in the shop window

For many years at Together we’ve been designing beautiful gifts and seasonal packaging for our clients, immersing ourselves in the latest trends and devising eye-catching ways to surprise and delight their discerning consumers.

We’d long dreamt of creating our own gift store. Then in 2012 we developed a little wooden hanging decoration as a Christmas client gift. The owner of super-stylish interiors store, Skandium, happened to see one, and promptly commissioned us to come up with some more designs. We took this as a sign that it was time to finally establish our own online shop. So we did!

We launched Perfectly Put Together in 2013. A labour of love, it involved the development of a whole new brand, from name, story and ethos, to visual identity, website design and collection theme. Then there was all the other stuff to think about, such as order quantities, marketing, manufacturing, packing, postage and delivery – phew! Our ‘old school’ hands-on approach includes dealing with all the orders and packing ourselves, and gives us a valuable window into our retail clients’ world, full of insights about the challenges they face every day.

‘Something we made, something we found’; that’s the Perfectly Put Together ethos. Each year sees us launch a new collection of objects, mostly designed by ourselves, to test out an idea, story, technique or trend. In design, the hardest briefs are often the broadest ones, and ours is perennially tricky: ‘we can do pretty much anything, so what shall we do?’ At the same time, it gives us plenty of room to experiment and come up with delightfully unusual creative solutions.

We love our shop. As well as being a brilliant testing zone for ideas, it makes us new friends, wins the occasional award and gets people talking. It’s also lots of fun to work on, and has swiftly become part of the fabric of life at Together, providing self-designed festive gifts for our clients and collaborators, and defining the theme for our legendary Christmas/collection launch parties! We’re delighted to have yet another outlet for our creativity, where we can put our ideas in the shop window for everyone to enjoy.

Keep an eye on this space and see what emerges from our imaginations next year.